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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

ghostly.

Of or pertaining to ghosts or spirits.

7 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

adj/ˈɡoʊstli/General-American
  1. Of or pertaining to ghosts or spirits.

    a ghostly figure with a hood
    The graveyard was haunted by a ghostly figure of a young girl.
  2. Spooky; frightening.

    A ghostly hush fell.
  3. Relating to the soul; not carnal or secular; spiritual.

    archaic
Where this word comes from

From Middle English gostly, gastlich, from Old English gāstlīċ (“spiritual, holy, clerical (not lay), ghastly, ghostly, spectral”), from Proto-West Germanic *gaistalīk (“spiritual”), equivalent to ghost + -ly. Cognate with Scots ghaistly, gaistly (“spiritual, ghastly, terrifying”), West Frisian geastlik (“spiritual, clerical, religious”), Dutch geestelijk (“spiritual, clerical, ecclesiastical”), German geistlich (“spiritual, sacred, religious”), Danish geistlig (“ecclesiastical, clerical”).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.